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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23791183">pragmatics</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride'>deadlybride</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>zmediaoutlet [28]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bunker Era, Dean Winchester/others - Freeform, Established Relationship, M/M, Underage Prostitution</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:09:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,258</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23791183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tells Sam about the work he used to do; he hopes Sam understands why he did it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>zmediaoutlet [28]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/587392</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>175</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>pragmatics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>part of an ongoing discussion about sex worker!Dean where I'm stubborn about my take; sort of asked for, sort of, by an anonymous person who wanted a 'rent-a-cozy' prostitution vibe.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he tells Sam about it later—it's under the influence of a lot of booze, a lot of Sam’s half-panicked worry about shit that happened ages ago, and a lot of Sam blowing him—like, <em>a lot</em> of that last part, and it’s maybe that which makes him finally say some stuff about it. He gets so liquid-bones relaxed, once Sam’s finally done with him and pulls off, smug, that sometimes things he doesn’t mean to say just come out of him. It wasn’t even that he didn’t really mean to say it, but he hadn’t ever admitted it before. Not clear, out loud, like this. He doesn’t even know how Sam got the hint in the first place, but once he had—Dean had to say something, sooner or later. He’s not dumb, he knows saying shit like <em>it’s not your business</em> won’t fly with Sam. Because, first, he knows his little brother, and that phrase is like waving a piece of prime steak at a starving dog. No way he’d get away with it. But also, he knows that—it’s different now. With how they are now. Some old rusted locks suddenly unlocked, and it’s easier now than it was to say things that are hard. It’s Sam’s business because every part of Dean is Sam’s business, and maybe sometimes he keeps some shit private even so, and he knows Sam does too, and that’s... okay. But this, this is kind of... integral, he thinks is the word. Part of how he thinks about some of his crap, and maybe if Sam gets this then he’ll get other things. Or at least he’ll leave Dean alone about it, for a while. Either way, it’s a win. The booze still makes it easier to say.</p><p>When he started he was too young. He gets that, now. From the perspective of age. ("Yeah," Sam says, "you’re an old, old man," and Dean hits him across the belly and says, "Let me talk, dillweed.") Funny, though, because at the time—he was fifteen, and he knew, knew, that he was older than any fifteen year old had any right to be—like, in the history of the world maybe, although he didn’t know too much history then and so it was kind of a dumb thought. (That’s the other thing he realizes, now. That it was bad but—people had it worse. A lot worse. Sometimes that doubles him over, inside, just to know.) Still, fifteen in his body, no matter how old he felt in his head, and he was running the household and raising Sam and looking after Dad, and it was—impossible. Impossible, on the money he had, and Dad gone too often, and he’d stolen and lied and grifted and done everything he could, but the car still needed gas and Sam still needed shoes and his stomach hurt, sometimes, with how hungry he got, because he was growing even faster than Sam, then, and it was really the last thing he needed. His bones hurt, in the middle of the night, stretching out and making him ache down into the pit of himself. Free lunch at school wasn't cutting it. Government assistance was out, and Dean didn't dare go to the soup kitchens more than once a week or so, because what if someone—asked? And he couldn't bring Sam. He just—he couldn't. So.</p><p>It was easy. Fifteen, and he'd been around a few too many blocks, but even if he'd thought of himself then as cynical, worldly, mentally ready to take on the whole universe and grin through the black eyes it gave him all the time—he wasn't really prepared, for how easy it was. They were staying in a shitty suburb of Chicago, right then, and that day Dean walked Sam home from school, and got him set up with the last of the Hamburger Helper-without-the-hamburger, and then said he was meeting a girl for a date and not to wait up. <em>As if</em>, Sam said, and was annoyed about being left behind, and Dean got on the bus and went into the city, into the part he'd looked at on their map where all the roads were real close to each other, and by the time ten o'clock rolled around he was standing in an alley, not far off from a club where the music was so loud it rattled his chest like his ribs were empty, and an older guy in a suit was crowding him up into the shadow behind a dumpster, kissing his throat, doing—things Dean hadn't done.</p><p>("Were you—" Sam says, and then swallows, and doesn't ask the dumb question.)</p><p>He made a hundred bucks. A hundred bucks. Back then that was everything. He took the train back to the south side, and then a nearly-empty bus back to their street, and made it back to Sam at two in the morning—and he was sore, and it was strange, and he knew then, sitting there in the bathroom with Sam snoozing on the other side of the door, and the money sitting crumpled in his hands, that even if he'd been old in some ways he wasn't—wasn't nearly old enough, in others. Knew then that some things it was possible to be too young for. The bigness of what it felt like, inside.</p><p>He doesn't remember it, now. Not exactly as it was. What he remembers is his breath puffing back against his face, his forearm folded up against the brick and his forehead shoved into the crook of it, and the way the man held his belly, in such a way that one of his fingers dug into Dean's bellybutton and that sort of hurt. The other stuff has faded, somehow. Not a surprise. A lot of life, between then and now. He remembers sitting on the toilet, looking at the money, and wishing that he'd kissed someone else—that he'd been brave enough to take Cara Petersen up on her offer—that he'd had more than his right hand and porn to go on. But it had already happened, and it had worked. A hundred bucks. Any missed opportunities, any worries, were hard to cling to in the face of that.</p><p>It wasn't all the time. Sometimes Dad would remember that things besides hunting and Jack were important, and there'd be a stint at a garage, or a series of good credit cards that they could use, to pay for motels and gas and to keep them all fed and healthy. But—it was easy. A travel plaza in Kingman, Arizona, when Dad had been gone for a month and Dean was working on couch change and forged checks—and he still looked sixteen, and no real teller would believe that it was his own credit card when he went to the grocery store, and it was getting to where Sam was eating dollar-store peanut butter for every meal, and Dean couldn't take that, anymore. So—a travel plaza, and his old Sabbath shirt with the sleeves torn off that hardly fit, and sucking the dick of some skanky trucker in his cab, and then letting the guy jerk him off in the cramped bunk. Then, tucking the cash into his back pocket, back down with his sneakers on the gravel and thinking about eggs, and lunchmeat, and the 30-pack of corndogs in the freezer section—and a different trucker looking at him, and smiling, and suddenly—the mental math, doubling up. Smiling back.</p><p>It's a miracle, he knows, that he never got killed. Then again—maybe he might've, but heaven was on his side and so he stayed right here on earth, no dying necessary. (Sam grimaces.) It was always easy, and he learned fast how to make it even easier. He got to know real quick what the look was. A guy who was furtive, lonely. A guy who drank at the end of the bar and watched the dancing with this hungry tilt to his eyes, like a dog chained up in a yard who'd never be allowed to run free. Dean got to know fast how to talk to those guys. How to be friendly, but not too friendly. How they saw it, when he was being—kind. He thinks of it that way, now, sometimes. Kind, but not giving himself up. A hand, a mouth, his ass—his dick, sometimes, for those rare skinny nervous dudes who looked at his six feet of hard-won muscle and wanted him to take care of them, and he'd do that, if he was asked, because their money was as good as anyone else's, and it fed the family and kept them in bullets and salt and gas, and that was what mattered. He remembers a guy who'd cried, when Dean got done fucking him, and Dean offered to blow him, make sure he finished good, and the guy just pushed his wallet at Dean and curled up in his blankets and sobbed his heart out. Dean took forty bucks out of the dude's wallet and sat there, with his hand on the guy's back, until his crying turned into slow even sleeping breath, and only then let himself out of the house, and he felt strange for days, after.</p><p>That's the part—he wishes he knew how to say it better. He's not a writer, not an actor. He doesn't know how to say it. How it wasn't—bad. Or—shit, sometimes it was. Sometimes it was fuckin awful, and scary, and all he could do was brace his knees on the bed and hope he didn't bleed—or hope at least that if he did, it wasn't so bad that Dad would notice. ("He never noticed," Dean says, and Sam looks away so that Dean can't see his face.) Times he'd hurt. But then—times it was fun, too. Times he'd go to a gay bar, if they were in a big city, and be real open about it—let some rich guy flirt with him, and say bald <em>two hundred bucks</em>, and get a big smile and the guy buying him drinks and get taken back to a nice, nice apartment, and get railed slow and steady on a king bed with soft sheets, and it'd feel good—great—the dude eager to make sure Dean came hard, because that was winning for that kind of man, and it wasn't like Dean lost, when that was the game. And there were times, too, when it was just boring. Needing a quick infusion of cash, because the Impala needed a whole new carb and Dad had spent all the credit card advances on ammo, and Dean popped onto a street corner and stole business from the regular whores and used his mouth to ruthlessly fuck his wallet full. Quick and transactional, and no big deal.</p><p>Bad, and good, and boring. It was just life. A job, and he'd had jobs way worse than this. Not worth bellyaching over that fuckin dickhead who wanted to leave bruises all over Dean's thighs, when the week before they'd run that job where a serial killer ghost was drowning kids. Like it even compared, one to the other. He slept with women in there, too—though none of them paid him, other than that one older lady who seemed real confused about the whole interaction, even though she had a pussy on her that practically sucked Dean's soul out through his dick. He grew up, and he got wiser. Managed to dodge most of the black eyes, and when he did get one he rolled with it, as best he could. Dad gave him the Impala and he and Sam got left alone more and more, and then one year, when Dean was twenty-one, they stayed for the entire winter about ten minutes outside of Buffalo, and he met David.</p><p>Buffalo was—cold. Fuck, it was cold, and they lived then in a tiny duplex, with old lady Kaczmarek on the other side who corralled Dean into doing her odd jobs all the time. Dean had dropped out of high school way before but Sam was still going, and Dad was working a weird long job in Canada—friggin Canada—and so Dean was in charge. In charge, and doing what he could, working fifteen hours a week at a gas station, and trying to keep those hours while not murdering his shithead assistant manager, and making sure they didn't freeze to death that whole winter, while Sam barely talked to him and just moodily did his homework, and the sun felt like it never came out.</p><p>David. That was the name he gave Dean, and Dean guesses it was real. Buffalo doesn't exactly have a bustling nightlife, especially when it's fifteen degrees, but there was a bar not all that far from the gas station, where Dean drank (legally!) after his shifts, and there was a cute lesbian bartender who didn't mind if Dean looked and didn't touch. David wouldn't say what his job was, but he was there most every night that Dean was, and one time—finally—when Dean was punching in his selections of Metallica and Ozzy and the Stones into the jukebox, David came over, and he introduced himself, and Dean saw him, even though he hadn't been looking.</p><p>He wasn't a bad-looking guy. Average-ish, in the face, but he had a decent body. Blondish hair, brown eyes, a scar on his lip like from getting glassed, but from everything about how David acted Dean would've laid ten grand on David never having been in a bar fight, or maybe any kind of fight, ever. Dean didn't dig PDA, especially not at straight bars, but he let David put his hand on Dean's waist before he said, <em>hey—I'm into this, but I charge, okay?</em> He didn't—at least then—really <em>need</em> the cash. They were getting by. But there were always things that came up—car repairs, and new clothes, and the damn gas bill—and he thought David maybe could afford it, with his polo shirts, and his good coat. He remembers that David had hesitated. That he'd looked sad, so sad Dean almost took it back, but then he'd said, <em>that’s okay with me</em>, and he'd asked Dean if he'd come to his house, and Dean hadn't called Sam, hadn't made any precaution, before he said okay, and he went.</p><p>It was a nice house. Small, but neat. The first time, David brought Dean home, and poured him a beer, and sat next to him on the couch, and asked Dean just to sit there, and they watched Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and when the episode was over David pulled Dean in close and kissed him slow, patient, hands careful on Dean's jaw. It was awkward, a little, with the commercials playing, and somehow David's hands were still cold even though it was kinda too warm in the house. But he was slow, and didn't rail Dean's mouth like a lot of guys did, if they even bothered with kissing at all, and Dean put his hand on David's chest and kissed back, helped make it good. When he pulled back he smiled, sort of, in a thin flat way that Dean's always remembered. Then, he gave Dean twenty dollars, and sent him home, and Dean arrived back at the duplex to find Sam reading moodily in his bedroom, and to find that he hadn't been missed. Next time, at the bar again, David bought him another beer and then took him home again, and there was making out on his couch, Dean pressed down into the soft leather, and before it could go too far David pulled back and breathed against his neck, and then said, <em>tell me what you do</em>, and Dean just made shit up—about a mechanic shop he wished he worked at, and working on engines, and wanting to open his own place someday—while David listened, patient, and then gave him another twenty for the trouble. Next time, David called him, because Dean had in a fit of insanity given him his number, and when Dean answered David had said <em>can you cook?</em> and Dean had said, <em>like shit</em>, and David had laughed and said, <em>perfect</em>, and when Dean got to his house there was stuff for burgers and mac &amp; cheese, and David sat at the kitchen counter while Dean did his best, and they talked about how shitty the Bills were, and then after dinner David kissed him, tasting like beer and mustard, and sent Dean home with another twenty bucks, and Dean didn't know, at all, what to do with it.</p><p>He was used to getting fucked. To getting fucked, and to getting fucked over. This wasn't that. David called him two days before Christmas and said <em>come over</em>, and Dad was home. Dad was home, at Christmas, and Sam was hiding out in his room and Dad was making silver rounds, and Dean made up some excuse and left and went to David's house and David had him strip down naked and crawl into bed and then they laid there, warm under the thick quilts of David's soft bed, and David told him about the plot of a book called A Wizard of Earthsea, which Dean hadn't ever heard of but that sounded kinda cool, and Dean fell asleep there, in David's arms, and woke up at one in the morning with David sleeping, too, and he laid there and stared at the polite beige wall in the dark and didn't know what to do. When he woke up again, in the morning, there was a hundred dollar bill folded up under a house key. Dean locked up and used the hundred to buy three bottles of bourbon and a trunk full of groceries and a new backpack, for Sam's Christmas present, and it wasn't until January 2 that David called him again, and Dean went to his house and opened the door with his key and found David in the kitchen and went to his knees, there, and blew him as good as he knew how—peeled his pants open and mouthed at his nuts and suckled him to hardness and made it fantastic, made it awesome, and when David finally blew in his mouth Dean swallowed it, showy, good, and when he looked up, licking his lips clean, David was red-faced, and wide-eyed, and Dean knew he'd done okay.</p><p>They fucked, after that. David was careful. Kind of boring. Terrified of hurting Dean, in a way that was kinda nice and kinda sad, and he was quiet during, and willing to suck Dean's dick, too, like only the shyest most in-the-closet queens ever had, and it wasn't—bad, but it wasn't great. He kept paying, and Dean didn't know why he did, when they were practically—but Dean wasn't going to say no, because for the first time in his entire life there was a cushion of cash, building up in the secret pocket in his duffle bag, and he didn't have to worry about where the next meal was coming from, or how they were going to pay the rent. No more getting arrested trying to steal dinner, not anymore. What was clearly more important for David was how he acted like they were dating, and Dean could roll with that, easy. He cooked dinner, and he listened to David complain about his coworkers, and he made up little normal problems too, borrowed from TV, and David held him in bed and commiserated, said <em>man, what a dick</em>, about one of Dean's fake managers at his fake job, and Dean sleepily agreed. He didn't know how David afforded it, all this—cozy crap. He didn't know why he kept doing it.</p><p>("What happened?" Sam says.)</p><p>They left Buffalo. March, still snowing, and one day Dad came back from who-knows-where and said he'd caught hints of some jobs down south, and they were relocating to Nashville for at least a month. Sam bitched and bitched, angry that he was losing whatever little fake friends he'd made at the high school, and he didn't talk to Dean all the way through packing up their clothes out of the duplex, and trying to decide what few new things they were going to take in the trunk of the Impala. He flung himself in the backseat with a book, when the time came to drive south, and Dean stood on the snowy driveway for a while, looking east, before he got into the driver's seat and turned on the car and moved on.</p><p>David wasn't the last. A lonely old veterinarian, in New Orleans, who wanted Dean to pretend to be his young husband. A pudgy accountant, in Colorado Springs, who asked Dean to just sleep with him after they had boring sex—just to sleep, and that summer it was one of the best nights of sleep Dean got, the whole time. Dean stopped looking for the other kind, the easy kind, because it wasn't as easy when he was older—and isn't that a grody thought—but also because he didn't… want it, the same way. Credit cards were easier to pull off, and hustling pool and poker started to work a lot better, once his jawline and his shoulders finally started to make him seem like an actual adult. Still. Even at twenty-six, that last summer—when he was really, truly alone, with Sam silent on the end of the phone and Dad in the wind—every once in a while, he'd be in a bar, and he'd realize a man was watching him.</p><p>"Did you—" Sam says, and bites his lips between his teeth. Dean doesn't know what he wants to ask. He's probably making a mental list, bullet points and all. He's still sitting on the end of the bed, the blanket half-pulled over his lap, and he's looking down at his hands, now. Like he wishes he hadn't dragged it all out in the first place, maybe.</p><p>"If you're asking if I did it again, when you came back, the answer's yeah," Dean says, and Sam's jaw flexes, his shoulders rounding. Dean doesn't say it to be a shithead, though, and it's not meant to be a fight. "Not a lot. Like I said, hustling pool was easier, sometimes. But, yeah. A few times the other thing was the easy way, and we needed cash, if the credit cards weren't coming through."</p><p>He shrugs, and Sam looks at him. First time Sam kissed him, that was… in the winter, about six months after their dad had died, and Dean had spent the night with a closeted investment banker and made four hundred dollars, not three days before. He doesn't think he'll ever tell Sam that. Personal, and private.</p><p>"I was going to ask," Sam says, "if you ever saw David again."</p><p>Dean blinks. Opens his mouth, and closes it again. Sam's watching his face, his expression in the lamplight—calm, curious. "No," Dean says, finally, and Sam's mouth tucks in at one side, somehow sad. "I mean, we weren't like—we leave town, Sam, that's what we do. Did, anyway. Before this whole thing."</p><p>Sam glances around, the heavy stone of his bunker bedroom dim around them. He still hasn't decorated, much, but at least there's some of his shirts hung up, and his TV that Dean comes in and commandeers, and two pillows, on the bed. Dean usually commandeers those, too.</p><p>"Yeah," Sam says, late enough that Dean practically forgot what it was in response to. He curls his hand around Dean's ankle, under the sheet, and squeezes. He gives Dean a little smile. "I know why he kept paying. Your mac and cheese isn't half-bad."</p><p>His thumb slips gentle over the knobs of bone. Dean says, "You're damn right it's not," and Sam crawls up the bed, and kisses him—soft, and precise, and nothing at all like anyone else, any of those random dudes, ever did.</p><p>Dean never said anything, never wanted to, because he didn't want Sam to—to get mad, or to worry about it, or to pity him. Pity would've been the worst thing, and he thinks if it had come out ten, fifteen years ago, that's what he would've gotten, and they probably would've had to have a fistfight before Sam'd let it go. If Sam ever did let it go. Sam's older now, though, and Dean thinks if ever Sam were going to get it it'd be now. When they've got a home, and they're both safe, and they've made each other promises that won't ever again be broken. He thinks, he hopes, that Sam understands—and Sam pulls away from his mouth just long enough to look at him, steady. He brushes Dean's temple with his thumb, curling his fingers soft just behind Dean's ear, and he smiles a little. Just a little, but looking at Dean straight-on, clear. Seeing him, exactly as he is.</p><p>Dean relaxes, even on Sam's shitty hard mattress. Yeah. That was all he needed, and wanted, and it was what he had. "I'll make you some Kraft later, okay?" he says, fake sugary soft, and Sam rolls his eyes and tugs him in, and it's like it always is, with his brother.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/616052743159824384/hey-uhhh-z-pls-write-the-rent-a-cozy-john-fic-i">posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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